The coordination and scheduling of meetings and/or other events requiring multiple participants can be a very challenging, and often frustrating, task. This is due, in part, to the fact that scheduling a meeting not only involves coordinating with each of the participants, and fitting the meeting into each of participant's individual calendars, but also the scheduling of the various meeting resources necessary for the meeting to take place, such as a conference room, conferencing equipment, audio-visual equipment, etc.
In addition, for many meetings, some participants may be required, while other participants are highly desired, but not required, and other participants are invited, but their presence is not particularly important or mandatory to achieve the meeting's goals. Likewise, some meeting resources desired for the meeting are required, while other meeting resources may be desirable, but are not mandatory to achieve the meeting's goals.
Currently, many individuals and businesses use calendar and/or appointment management systems. Typically, calendar and/or appointment management systems provide a user with the ability to view available appointment times, view scheduled appointments, and/or schedule appointments through a user interface device and a user interface display screen. In addition, many calendar and/or appointment management systems can be configured to allow other parties to view available appointment times, view scheduled appointments and/or schedule appointments on multiple individual's calendars. Some calendar and/or appointment management systems also automatically find available time slots on multiple calendars and notify/invite each of the potential participants to a proposed meeting through the participant's computing system implemented calendar and/or appointment management system and/or e-mail.
In addition, many businesses also use conference room reservation systems. Typically, conference room reservation systems give a user the ability to view conference room availability and to reserve a conference room through a user interface device and/or a user interface display screen.
As a result of the capabilities discussed above, some currently available calendar and/or appointment management systems and/or conference room reservation systems are powerful tools for scheduling meetings for multiple participants. However, currently available calendar and/or appointment management systems and conference room reservation systems are typically not integrated and neither takes into account available meeting resources beyond a capability to choose a conference room and, in some cases, the seating capacity of the conference room.
In addition, while some currently available calendar and/or appointment management systems do provide the ability to designate some participants as mandatory, and others as optional, attendees, currently available calendar and/or appointment management systems do not factor in the number of non-mandatory participants available and/or the individual importance of those participants to the goals of the meeting. Likewise, currently available conference room reservation systems do not provide the user with an opportunity to choose a meeting time based on the greatest number of desired resources available and/or the individual importance of those resources to the goals of the meeting.